Turning Legumes into Love Handles

I am giving up sugar for Lent.  Please note, sugar-free Jell-o pudding, skinny vanilla lattes (sugar-free syrup, duh), wine, and Belgian chocolate when physically in Belgium are not, for these 40 days, going to fall into the "sugar I am giving up" category.  And, before you call me a sell-short, slacker, half-ass or pagan, understand that I am a realist and want to set myself up for success.  Hence, appropriate boundaries.

Anyway, the reasons I am doing this vary.  To start, I got married about five months ago, and while I wouldn't say I've "let myself go," I would say I likely need pliers, duct tape  and an allen wrench to zip into my wedding dress.  Another reason has to do with showing the most minuscule bit of solidarity with a friend who is facing (and will always face) some pretty daunting medical issues, and I want to offer this Lent to her (not real sure where God stands on that, but it is done with good intentions so I'll worry about that later).  It's insignificant, but I see it as a bit of prayer every time I pass the candy dish. Moving on.

So, in preparation, I have gone on a bit of a bender, but this is an odd sort, because I have managed to make lean legumes into corpulent conspirators.  Backing up for context, wheat and I don't get along so well.  It's not dangerous to me by any means - no Celiac here - but gluten leaves varying degrees of digestive devastation in its wake.  Generally speaking, I avoid most wheat products (but not pizza on St. Patrick's day after six beers).

It started on Friday night, after John and I cooked up an Asian feast.  I won't get into this, because when you and your spouse decide Friday night is a good time to shop for and prepare a four-course meal that requires ingredients like galangal, please believe me when I say it's going to involve trips to three separate food stores, at least two squabbles, and one meal consumed at 10:30 p.m. But, I digress.

So after this meal, we were both hankering for something sweet, but light.  We decided to try a pumpkin smoothie from Real Simple, because it seemed easy enough and we had the ingrediants on hand.  Really, you say? Pumpkin puree?  Oh yes.  After each Halloween, rather than pitch our pumpkins, we roast them, puree the insides and then have about 16 cups of real pumpkin in our freezer for the balance of  the year.  The rest of the recipe seemed simple enough - pumpkin, milk, honey, ice. 

Well, I don't like whole milk or honey, so we used skim and agave.  Then the taste wasn't quite right so we added Splenda and cinnamon.  Then something was still off, so more pumpkin and actual pumpkin pie spice was added to the mix.  On it went until we ended up with a frothy, spicy, not quite sweet enough oddity that all added up to "meh" calories consumed.  Yes, I drank it all.  And yes, I know pumpkin is not a legume, but don't kill my alliteration.

Moving on to Saturday, my friend Lauren had been raving about these black bean brownies a friend of hers brought into work.  Curious, and always wanting to try new flour-free tricks, I gave this recipe a spin, sans the chocolate chips and powdered sugar.  They were pretty good, not great - perfect consistency, needed more sweet, probably what the sugar or chocolate would have provided.  But still despite the mediocre taste, I managed to put away about half of them in a two day span because hey - these are beans right?  Healthy, full of protein.  A solid snack!

Anyway, the real hum-dinger came tonight.  After mentally committing to going sugar-free this Lent, there was this little sprout of an idea that kept calling to me, and jumping around in my head.  On Friday, one of the girls at the office mentioned  a cookie dough dip.  Made with CHICKPEAS. I had looked it up last week and added it to to my mental must-do, but in the middle of tonight's painful, incomprehensible Macro Economics lecture, I kept having inappropriate thoughts about this dip.  It would be mine.  It would be mine tonight! Yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

Fast forward.  I plow through Dominick's and grab the requisite items to make this version of the dip.  Chocolate Covered Katie, I don't know you, but I love you.  I skipped the flax and oats, added a few splashes of milk, used Splenda and squeeze of agave, and I kid you not, it was like eating raw cookie dough with a spoon.  I was floored.  I proudly served it up to John with apples (for me) and graham crackers (for him), waiting to have the awe echoed.  Let's just say I should have known better.  John's mom, Agnes, is a comfort-food kitchen goddess.  He grew up in a full fat, full butter, full Crisco paradise, so the underwhelming response of "Yeah, it's good.  Missing some mouth feel.  Probably be better cold" was par for the course.

But trust me, ladies. Nothing "meh" here. Totally worth it.  Because in a "sh*t girls say" world, a bowlful of cookie dough makes perfect sense.  It only made my pants tighter, but what a great fat Monday.

Eat up.  One more day.